Spellcasters
The ability to cast spells is reserved to two specialized spellcaster classes, the Arcane Units and the Disiple Units, and some special units like Vampires or Heroes. Promoting a unit generally preserve his Promotions, so it is often a nice idea to promote a spellcaster to a superior unit. Mages and Arcane Spells Adepts, Mages and Archmages are Arcane spellcaster, a Class of unit that specializes in the various Spheres of Magic, using Mana. Lich are archmages that have gone a bit farther in the study of Death Mana. They are quite flexible and may specialize in a single sphere or became generalist. Note that Tier 4 units are always National Units, maxed to 4 units per player. Priests and Divine Spells Disciples, Priests and High Priests are Disciple spellcasters, devoted to a particular Religion. They are rigidly tied to the Religion of chiose and often take special, typical name, like Luridus. *= change depending on particular religion. In example a Priest may be called Confessor, Cultist, Priest of Leaves, Stonewarden, Ritualist or Vicar. Special units Most Heroes have spellcasting abilities, and some are super-wizards with access to a lot of Spheres or unique spells. A lot of mid-range or top-tier units may be upgraded from disciple units, thus retaining the spellcasting abilities. To have some example: * Disciple of leaves --> ranger with Medic I and Summon Tiger promotion * Ritutalist --> Eidolon with Medic II and Ring of Fire promotion * Stonewarden --> Druids with Shield of Faith Progression Some units can't be built, only upgraded to. You need to upgrade them from their predcessors, like Adepts, when they reach a certain level. For tier 3 units (like Mages) the unit must be at least 4th level to upgrade. For tier 4 units (Archmages, etc) the unit must be at least 6th level. This level requirement will be displayed in the tooltip for the unit you're trying to upgrade to in the Civilopedia. The upgrade procedure will require gold as usual, and this may prove as a heavy cost if you want a lot of spellcasters. Note that the game does not warn if you lack the money to perform an upgrade. As a rule, if you may not upgrade your adept, check that he has not exhausted the movement points and that you have the required sum. Tier 4 units are National units, meaning that each civilization can only control a limited number of them (usually 4) at any one time. The tech requirements for the spellcaster are: * Arcane: Knowledge of the Ether --> Sorcery --> Arcane Lore * Divine: Religion --> Priesthood --> Theology Gain XP Spellcaster get XP automatically over time, just like Heroes, but slower. With the Arcane trait, they get XP faster. Upgraded spellcasters like Mages gain experience more quickly than their more lowly counterparts (but generally need more to gain levels, of course). In addition, you can send your spellcasters into direct combat against weak or wounded enemies. Mana Spellcasting The rules of spellcasting are: * Channeling I allows casting of Rank 1 spells * Channeling II allows casting of Rank 2 spells * Channeling III allows casting of Rank 3 spells * Mana X allow casting of Arcane Spells for Magic Sphere X. * Relgion Y and Divine allows casting of Disciple spells for Relgion Y Adepts Adepts start with Channeling I, and will have access to some Mana Type, if only your Palace Mana. With Channeling I, the correct Mana Type (ES. Death Mana), and the Arcane promotion, they may learn the lvl. 1 spell for that Sphere (Es. Death I = Summon Skeleton) Mages At level 4 you may pay to upgrade them to Mages, that start with Channeling II and a free promotion. Having Channelling II and Death I, the Mage may learn directly Death II, also if you have lost access to Death mana: what counts is the knowledge of the Rank 1 spell. Archmages Lich Archmage with Death 3 can cast Lichdom. He retains all of his spell, gain undead and become another unit class. Thus, freeing your archmage slot. If you turned all of your Archmagi into Liches, then you can promote another 4 into Archmagi. Thus, 4 Liches, + 4 Archmagi = 8 Archmagi equivalent units. Disciple Disciple spellcaster have the Disciple promotion that demonstrate their Class, and the Divine promotion, that allows access to Divine Spells which differ between Religions. Note that the basic disciple unit, the Disciple, does not have any Channeling promotion. As a consequence they are not able to cast any spell and they gain xp slowly. Priests Priests gain the Channeling II promotion which permits them to gain xp much faster than their disciple counterparts. Well, technically, the only priests that have also Channeling I are the Priests of Winter. The rest have Channeling II without Channeling I, and the High Priests have Channeling II and III without Channeling I. Heroes like Chalid and Yvain have all the channeling promotions, and of course Hero, so they level up fastest. High Priests To have High Priests you have a religion (except Council of Esus) as your state religion, research Theology and have Incense (or Gems, for RoK high priests). Paladin/Druids/Eidolon These special units are the Paladin of Good, of Nature and of Evil. All of them are very powerful national units (maxed to 4 per player) and are Disciple Units. See Disciple Units for more info. Special units Spellcasting for special unit is quite complex. A Hero may cast unique spells on top of Arcane and Divine spells. In example Chalid has the following promotions: Channeling I, II and III, Divine, Sun I, Law I. Having Sun I he may cast the corresponding Arcane Spell Scorch and he may learn Blinding Light and Summon Aurealis. Having Law I he may cast the corresponding Arcane Spells, Loyalty and he may learn Summon Host of Einherhar and Valor. Having Divine and Channeling I, II and III, allow him to cast Divine Spells for Empyrean Religion: Revelation and Crown of Brilliance like any Luridus. He has not Cure Disease and Heal and Medic and Command promotion like a Luridus. And finally he has an exclusive spell, Pillar of Fire, which does 50% base damage, maximum 75%, to an adjact tile. Spell modifiers Giving Combat upgraeds to spellcasters also makes their spells stronger; e.g. if you cast Raise Skeleton with a Mage that has Combat I and Combat II, the Skeleton will have Empower I and Empower 2. If the Mage has Spell Extension I, the Skeleton will gain Mobility I. A Malestorm launched by a Combat IV Mage will have +5% x 4 = +20% Spell Damage. There are 3 spell modifiers: * Spell extension - mobility promotions to summons. * Spell power (Combat promotions) - boost spell damage and the chance to resist spells, provide an empower promotion to summons * Metamagic promotion - boost spell damage and reduce the chance of spell being resisted Any promotion can alter the damage dealt by a spell, the chances to resist a spell, the changes enemies will resist a spell, and/or give a promotion to all summons. Advanced Strategies Other Archmage equivalent units thanks to Govannon Having Govannon means that you can effectively get 16 archmages, not counting any heroic ones. That is 4 Archmages, 4 Liches, 4 Druids, and 4 high priests. Govannon can teach any unit magic promotion level 1 (Air 1, Earth 1, etc). Any units with Channeling 2 and 3 can learn magic promotion level 2 if they have level 1. So if Govannon teaches Air 1 to your Druids and High Priest (they have Channeling 2 and 3), the Druids and High Priests then will be able to learn Air 2 and Air 3, just like your Archmage. But Govannon can NOT teach disciples units. So the only way to do it is: * build 8 scouts * have govannon teach them ALL the Rank 1 mana spheres you want. (you won't be able to learn them latter, even with govannon). * switch to FOL State Religion and buid at least one Temple * upgrade your 8 Scouts to Priests of Leaves (they can learn all Rank 2 of the mana spheres) * upgrade 4 Priests of Leaves to Druids (obtaining archmagi-druids) * upgrade 4 Priests of Leaves to High Priests (obtaining archmagi-highpriest) Alternate solution is to upgrade your Lich from your archmagi-druids: * build 4 scout and just to give them Death I * upgrade to Priest of Leaves then Druid * Learn Death III (and Command III) * cast Lichdom (obtaining Divine-Lichs) You are the new owner of a Divine-Lich: a lich with divine spells of FOL + command III + medic 2 + heal AND can learn new mana spheres from govannon and even by himself. (it is thus a better lich than a normal lich due to the access to divine spells.) With this exploit you have no need to have lvl 6 nor "strength of will" in order to have Rank 3 spells! There are some drawback to this strategy: * the divine-lich misses 3 free promotions that normal archmages (and normal lichs) have (1 from birth, 1 from upgrade to mage and 1 from upgrade to archmage) * The divine-lich do not have the potency promotion given by the arcane trait * the divine-lich do not have the free experience given by the caves of the ancestors. * all your druids have FOL divine sphere and cast treants. In rIt may be better to have your ifferent religion; (a RoK divine druid, casting "earthquake" is wonderful for cracking cities : no fortifying defense, and maybe a wall down). Twincast Twincast is a powerful Promotion availabe only to Arcane Hero. It requires Combat V, that is not a prblem for a Hero, and has the effect of doubling the Summoned units. So, your Summon Spectre will give you *two* Spectre (instead of one). XP gain See also * https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/frequently-asked-questions.190988/page-88#post-13671397 * https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/when-do-disciples-gain-xps.424929/ Everytime a unit wins a Combat he takes XP. For a spellcaster to gain rapidly XP is crucial All spellcaster gain xp automatically, sitting in their library and laboratories. Priests gain xp faster than Adepts, but slower than Mages. This is because they start with Channeling 2 and not channeling 1. Adepts only have channeling1, and mages have both. High Priests have channeling 2 and 3, while archmages have 1-3. Thus, High Priests gain xp faster than mages, but slower than archmages. Arcane leader have a great advantage on arcane unit xp, but there are no equivalent in the disciple line. It may be a nice idea to earòy buid some spellcaster units, to let them "ripe" and be ready for battle as time passes Spiritual gives to Disciples and Arcane gives to Adepts Under Mods\Fall from Heaven 2\Assets\XML\Units\CIV4PromotionInfos.xml there is a tag called which controls the percent chance (modified by game speed, I think) that the promotion will cause an eligible unit to gain a point of experience each given turn. It will only give the XP to units which have 1 in their defines in Mods\Fall from Heaven 2\Assets\XML\Units\CIV4UnitInfos.xml. Promotions which use that tag include Potency (which Spiritual gives to Disciples and Arcane gives to Adepts), Channeling 1-3, and Unholy Taint. Base level disciples could only have the xp from Potency, but Priests all have channeling promotions too. Other promotions (in fact only the Hero promotion, iirc) may grant xp through a different tag, , which gives guaranteed xp every turn for any type of unit up to a limit of 100 (or whatever you set in the FREE_XP_MAX define in Mods\Fall from Heaven 2\Assets\XML\GlobalDefinesAlt.xml).